Lent- Day 3
Lent 2010: A Season for Listening
Day 3- Listening to the Sermon on the Plane: Part 2
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” – Luke 6:21
Can hunger and weeping be an occasion for blessing?
There are ways that we seek to fill ourselves with material things to cover over our profound spiritual longings and pain. We have all experimented with retail therapy to treat our anxiety and sooth our grief. We are a people with material addictions. We are shopaholics, caffeine addicts, binge eaters, and entertainment junkies. We spend vast amounts of money, time, and effort looking for that next fix that will give us some measure of comfort or peace. Treating the symptoms seldom leads us to a cure. At the root of our problems are a hunger that no food will satisfy and a sense loss that no acquisition will comfort.
Today we consider the ways that our material comfort keeps us both insulated and isolated from God and each other. We have come to see a relationship with God and neighbor as something we can chose to embrace or ignore, rather than a necessity for survival. Not only have we deprived ourselves of others, we have deprived others of us.
Today we are poor, hungry, and mournful should we recognize our poverty or not. If a community is only as prosperous, nourished, secure and healthy as the lowliest member, we are very poor and pitiful indeed. It has been suggested that the materials and efforts expended on war if redirected would be more than sufficient to eradicate world hunger!
If you have never considered the spiritual discipline of fasting, I invite you to join us in the coming weeks. There are several ways that we can observe a fast. Some will choose to omit a meal from a certain day during the week. Others will abstain from eating from sunrise to sunset. Some may choose to eat simply: omitting expensive, rich, or favorite foods. Some may wish determine a period of time in which they will consume nothing but water. Regardless of the form of fasting we might choose there are two elements that are the same: time that is usually dedicated to preparing and eating food are given to God in a offering of attentiveness in prayer; and the money that is saved by eating simply or abstaining all together are given to God as an offering of mercy as alms to the poor.
As we enter into a time of fasting and abstinence we will become aware of our deeper hunger and grief. As we experience hunger we will be reminded of our neighbors who involuntarily go without everyday. Together we learn that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Prayer will be our food as we discover our hunger for God. Mourning will be our anxious anticipation of the coming kingdom, which even now has come very near to us. – Rev. John Mattox
Let us pray,
Lord, we have heard it said that Joy comes in the morning.
We wait for the joy, we seek comfort, we long for laughter.
Surround us with your love, fill us with your joy.
Help us to love others as you have loved us.
Help us to laugh in spite of the difficulties we face.
Lord, more than us, bless those who are in greater need than us.
Amen.
-Rev. Katie Mattox